News, Commentary and Insights from the Flash Player and AIR Product and Engineering Teams

Posts in Category "Tablets"

Adobe is pleased to announce the availability of Adobe AIR 2.7 SDK and the Adobe AIR 2.7 runtimes. Adobe AIR 2.7 includes new features for both desktop and mobile applications with mobile support for Android 2.2+, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS 4+ operating systems. Companies can build and deploy AIR 2.7 apps using Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 with an upcoming update to AIR 2.7 later this month. (BlackBerry Tablet OS is scheduled to receive an OTA (over the air) update of AIR 2.7 by the end of June.)

New AIR 2.7 Features

Mobile

Enhanced rendering for iOS: AIR apps for iOS render up to 4x faster in CPU mode. This change will improve the performance of many AIR for iOS apps, including those built with the Flex framework. Watch the performance improvements

Faster development time for iOS applications: Developers can now debug and build iOS applications faster than with previous versions using a new mode available within the AIR Developer Tool (ADT). During the development of an application, developers can now choose to use “interpreter mode” to streamline the testing and debugging development cycle.

AIR installation on SD cards for Android devices: This feature allows end users to install or move the AIR runtime onto the SD cards within their Android devices so they can free up storage space on the phone.

Desktop

Integrated support for Media Measurement: The Adobe AIR 2.7 runtime now includes the same built-in support for media measurement as Adobe Flash Player 10.3, allowing companies to simplify the collection of real-time, aggregated reporting data for how content is distributed and viewed by users. With direct support for Adobe SiteCatalyst, powered by Omniture, developers can implement video analytics for existing or legacy video players with as little as two lines of code. For additional information, see the article on measuring video consumption in Flash.

Acoustic echo cancellation: With integrated support for acoustic echo cancellation, developers can now add real-time VoIP capabilities to games, enterprise, and other types of applications without requiring users to wear a noise-canceling headset. Users can now chat using the speaker built into their desktop or laptop computer. This new capability is also available in Flash Player 10.3.

Navigation Improvements for HTML Content: Enables seamless weblink-style navigation within desktop apps such as magazine viewers and ebook readers. Developers can now respond to a new event to be notified when content within the HTMLLoader control attempts to change the location of a page. This enhancement provides developers with a better way to implement intra-application navigation.

G20-G8: This is the official app of the French Presidency of the G20 and the G8. Get real time updates and access to all the latest developments from the Summits and the preparatory meetings, as well as video reports and photos on the G20-G8 website.

Performance Improvements

Finally, performance improves with each release of AIR and the Flash Player. If you checked out the AIR 2.7 on iOS video, you can really see the difference. If you missed it earlier, here are a few Flash Player 10.3 on mobile related performance resources to check out.

Adobe is pleased to announce the availability of the Adobe® AIR® 2.6 SDK and AIR® 2.6 desktop runtimes for Windows, Mac and Linux. With AIR 2.6, AIR achieves feature parity for Android and iOS platforms. This new release provides major performance and feature enhancements for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) app development as well as updates for Android and desktop app development.

“Adobe AIR 2.6 enables me to develop once and publish across multiple platforms. There are slight tweaks required for each platform (Android vs iOS) but we’re talking about a few minutes not weeks. The majority of the optimizations revolve around screen sizes which would be an issue regardless of the development tool. If I were targeting Android and iOS natively vs Adobe AIR I would expect my costs to be at least 80% higher; and much closer to 100 – 150% higher should maintenance and updates be required for each platform.”

-Charlie Schulze, President and co-founder, Woven Interactive, LLC

Video: Watch Charlie Schulze’s demo of “Comb Over Charlie” a multiscreen app (Android and iOS smartphones, tablets and Windows laptop) developed using AIR.

New Features in AIR 2.6 for iOS and Android

AIR for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

“I’m now getting 60 fps on an iPhone 3GS, it’s smoother than Packager for iPhone too!”

-Kevin Newman, Senior Developer, adcSTUDIO

“My project uses things like vector graphics, blend modes, and filters. In the past, many effects needed to be removed or altered for iOS to achieve decent performance. This gargantuan improvement means that I can now use the same project to target both iOS and Android. It’s likely to save me many hours of time previously spent on optimization.”

-Josh Tynjala, Founder, Bowler Hat Games

Updated AIR for iOS support with improved performance. Developers can take advantage of new features in iOS 4 like multitasking, Retina display support for higher screen resolutions, and front and back camera support. Developers can now build applications that capture audio with microphone support and take advantage of the same graphics hardware method used in AIR for Android using OpenGL ES 2 for high performance graphics.

Packager for iPhone (PFI) is now replaced with functionality integrated with AIR Developer Tool (ADT) a command-line tool for compiling applications in the AIR SDK. ADT can now be used to package AIR files, native desktop installers, AIR applications for Android and iOS.

Submit apps to be included in the Amazon Appstore for Android when the store launches. Companies now have an additional distribution option with one of the largest online shopping destinations on the web. Learn more in Christian Cantrell’s blog post “AIR 2.6 Applications and the Amazon Appstore for Android”.

USB debugging was added as an additional debugging option to WiFi. Learn more about AIR 2.6 features for mobile and desktop please read Scott Castle’s article“What’s new in AIR 2.6″.

The tutorial covers a number of important topics including how to create a basic mobile application, using mobile item renderers, navigating and passing information between views, creating an action bar, integrating with the device capabilities (dialer, SMS, email), using a RemoteObject, and using a local SQLite database. To get started, you will need to first download the Flash Builder Burrito release from Adobe Labs.

Below is a summary of the material covered directly from the document:

In this tutorial, you use Flash Builder "Burrito" and Flex "Hero" to build a simple, yet fully functional employee directory application for Android devices. "Burrito" is the code name for the next version of Flash Builder, and "Hero" is the code name for the next version of the Flex SDK. You don’t need an Android device to complete this tutorial: you can use the simple emulator available in Flash Builder Burrito to run and debug the application. The Employee Directory application allows you to: search for employees, view employee details, navigate up and down the org chart, and call, text, and email employees.

"It turned out to be amazingly simple: I was able to run the application without changing a line of code, with a great and consistent deployment experience: You select the target platform, hit the run button, and the app is packaged, deployed, and started on the device you selected."

Below is a video demonstration by Christophe showing the application running on a Google Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Tab and the BlackBerry Playbook Emulator.

Our team is fully focused on making it as easy as possible for developers to target applications that can run across different devices from desktop computers to smart phones to tablet devices and televisions. If you are building an application and would like to let us know about it, please leave us a comment!

Adobe is pleased to announce at the Adobe MAX 2010 conference the availability of Adobe AIR 2.5 for televisions, tablets, smartphones and desktop operating systems. Adobe AIR 2.5 now supports:

Smartphones and tablets based on BlackBerry® Tablet OS, Android™ and iOS

Desktops running on Windows®, Macintosh and Linux® operating systems

Televisions with Samsung as the first television manufacturer to ship Adobe AIR in its line of Samsung SmartTV devices

Also device manufactures Acer, HTC, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and others are expected to ship the AIR runtime pre-installed on a variety of devices including tablets and smartphones later this year and early 2011. A list of mobile devices that meet the AIR system requirements can be found on Adobe.com.

Now with the Flash Platform, developers can use their existing web skills and reuse common code across devices and platforms to develop applications, content and video for the web on both personal computers and mobile devices or build standalone applications that run outside the browser on a wide range of devices, including TVs.

In just two short weeks after the AIR runtime was released on the Android Market, hundreds of AIR apps are already available in the Android Market for smartphones and tablets with AIR currently ranked 4.5 out of 5 stars on the Android Market. In addition, AIR apps are also available in Apple’s App Store. You can visit AppBrain for a list of AIR apps for Android currently available on the Android Market. This is what a few of our customers had to say about AIR 2.5:

Associated Press: “The Associated Press is very pleased using Adobe AIR to make some of our features covering the upcoming midterm elections available on the iPhone and Android devices.”

– Brian R. Scanlon, Director, Election Services, The Associated Press

Emantras: The ROI and resource savings to create applications with Adobe AIR and the Flash Platform is truly game changing. It is the only solution available that allows you to reuse code to target smartphones, tablets, desktops, and TV’s. The ability to deliver elearning content on multiple devices makes learning accessible to just about everyone.

– Sesh Kumar, CEO, Emantras Inc.

South Park Digital Studios: “With Adobe AIR 2.5, we were able to leverage existing code to quickly launch a new version of our popular South Park Avatar Creator across multiple platforms, letting our fans create their own South Park alter ego on the web or their Android smartphones and tablets.”

-Greg Kampanis, Senior Vice President of Content Strategy and Operations, South Park Studios

MixMatchMusic: With Adobe AIR we use the same code for desktops, tablets and smart phones, which saves us time, money and provides efficiencies of deployment. Then, we can quickly and efficiently distribute these apps through Adobe’s application distribution service, Adobe InMarket.

– Charles Feinn, CEO and co-founder of MixMatchMusic, developer of the MobBase mobile app service

You can learn more about all the new features for television, mobile and desktop devices in the article “What’s new in AIR 2.5” written by the AIR product management team and if you can’t join us at MAX you can attend MAX virtually by watching the keynote speech live. Here is the schedule of the MAX live broadcasts:

Finally, Adobe also announced two additional pieces of AIR related news. First, an update to the open source Flex framework and a preview release of Flash Builder that will enable developers to now build applications for mobile devices as well as desktops and TVs. Also, Adobe InMarket™, a new service that allows developers to easily distribute and sell their applications on app stores across different device types on app stores from Acer, Intel, and others is now available.

Stay tuned this week for more exciting information from the MAX conference and new about AIR.

At Mobile World Congress 2010 Adobe announced Adobe AIR would support mobile devices by the end of this year. Adobe AIR, a key component of the Adobe Flash® Platform, enables developers to use a single development platform and reuse existing code to quickly build applications that run outside the browser, across multiple screens, devices and platforms. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes (AIR and Flash Player), it also gives developers a way to more rapidly target other mobile and desktop environments.

Today we reach another important milestone by posting the Adobe AIR runtime to the Android Market thus enabling our developers to distribute their applications to Android smartphone and tablets. Some of these apps are already available as AIR applications running on the desktop and iOS. We are also on track to deliver the next version of the AIR SDK by the end of 2010. Additional information regarding Adobe AIR for Android is available at Adobe Labs.

With the support of our Open Screen Project ™ partners, soon Adobe Flash Platform tools will allow for AIR apps to be compiled and delivered to Android, iOS, BlackBerry™ Tablet OS devices and more. Come see us at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles on October 23-27 for first access to industry leading tools that enable the development of applications across multiple screens, devices and platforms.

Android Device Requirements for Adobe AIR

Google Android 2.2 Operating system

ARMv7-A Processor

OpenGL ES2.0

H.264 & AAC H/W Decoders

256 MB of RAM

Downloading Adobe AIR for your Android device.

You only need to download Adobe AIR once from the Android Market and it will work with any AIR based application on your device. If you download an AIR application to your Android device and AIR is not already installed, the application will take you directly to download the AIR runtime. In the future, AIR will be preinstalled on many newer smartphones and tablets therefore eliminating the need for the initial download.

After queuing for an hour at the flagship Apple Store in SF this morning, we finally got our hands on a stack of magical devices. We’ve spent the rest of the day having fun getting the first Adobe AIR apps running on the iPad.

Adobe and Wired magazine just introduced a new digital magazine concept that provides an immersive, interactive content experience for readers as well as innovative possibilities for advertisers. The video above provides an excellent overview of the collaboration and includes interviews with some of the individuals leading this project at both Wired and Adobe.

Adobe AIR was used to develop the prototype of the application unveiled by Chris Anderson (Wired) and Jeremy Clark (Adobe) at the TED conference last week. For additional information on the concept, please see the post by Introducing a New Digital Magazine Experience on Adobe Digital Publishing blog.